“Art with frames, life without them.”

Anna Dart is an awarded multidisciplinary artist who promotes cultural, ecological, and social sustainability at the intersection of new technology and bridges traditional art and the Metaverse. Co-founder at Exquisite Workers. Guest artist at the digital fashion house The Fabricant, Sloika.xyz, Barcelona Picasso Museum, SINGULART gallery, and on Superchief Gallery NFT. NFT evangelist. Winner at the first Claire AI Contest. 

Having developed her signature minimalistic style in painting and working with AI, since 2012, Anna´​s works are a passionate call for better universal human connection in the digital era. Dart´s magnetic characters search for significant, transporting, meditative encounters in the third era of the Internet of hyper-connectivity and solitude.

Over the last decade, Anna Dart has worked on cross-pollinating the disciplines of visual and performing arts by creating site-specific collaborative exhibitions and performances to give a third dimension to the visual arts by introducing a voice and a movement. In 2020, during the Coronavirus lockdown, Anna Dart continued her work in building the collaborative culture by contributing to the digitally-native platform Exquisite Workers founded by Roger Haus.

Exquisite Workers brings the best of surrealist traditions on blockchain in a form of the communal “Exquisite Corpse” game. The result of their ongoing collective work with hundreds of artists between 2 and 94 years old is the longest-living piece of art crafted online (2020-2022). Each piece of Instagram grid is a personal universe of a different creator and the mirror of the historical moment we live in. Exquisite Workers ´s practice is based on the concept of co-creation popularised by the Surrealists. A surrealist technique is to create a single artwork, by each contributing a section without knowing what the others had created. The result is fantastical compositions, with no sense, but this is precisely the point of this exercise, to load the unconscious mind, to take over, and create something with an emphasis on chance and randomness.

In June 2023, Exquisite Workers curated the largest AI art show in history with 100 AI artists “AI Surrealism” with the one-month exhibition at the Superchief Gallery NFT, NYC, USA.

The concept of Surrealism came to prominence in the 1920s when the world like ours was developing fast and unpredictably. As we delve into the always-online era, the Surrealists grappled with the transition from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles living in the new industrial landscape. The challenge in both occasions is to move with the times and face the unknown. Surrealism is all about experimentation, adaptation, discovery, and illogical depictions of reality, things which are so important nowadays when we are transitioning from analog to digital, and from digital to cyber.

“At Exquisite Workers we ask: what would the Surrealists have created if they shared the experience of virtual realities with us? And what can we do to be good ancestors? At Exquisite Workers, we are creators for creators, creating the opportunities and making the record of the history, together.”

In 2022, as a part of the ongoing collaboration with the digital fashion house The Fabricant, Anna created the fabrics for the digital dresses based on the original paintings. For the first time, the physical art became digital couture and a bridge between two realities.

“Digital Fashion uses technology to enhance the human body and create new ways of self-expression. It challenges conventional concepts of beauty and the human form as virtual representation questions traditional notions of body size, shape, and appearance. Digital Fashion is sustainable and enables a closer understanding of reality and a faster response to the needs. In Digital Fashion, we are the creative agents of our self-expression and can curate our virtual identity in real time. Digital Fashion has no history, no seasonality, no norms to follow, and no gravity. It breaks free from the constraints of normality, as the limit is our imagination.”

“Digital dress is the new canvas.”

Anna is a recipient of the 1st AI Art Claire Silver Award and a Finalist at the NFT.NYC Award in the Best Traditional artist turned NFT artist category next to Takashi Murakami and Trevor Jones (2022). 

“My use of AI in my recent work is a co-creation too, and a commentary on the changing nature of our world, as technology continues to play an increasingly prominent role in shaping our experiences and identities. We are standing on the edge of a new era with AI. Every time the collaboration with AI takes place, we tap into a higher level of intelligence and find ultimate understandings through shared neural networks.”

“When machine and human come together, there is this human making choices, expressing the unique story creating what the tools provide you with. The key here is when you try this new media and you feel this excitement, remember this emotion, maintain it. And when you leave the screen and go out, keep this emotion alive, for every single thing that you do, during the day.”

Anna ́s early paintings are in private collections in different countries of the world held by such celebrities as Hofesh Shechter, Dan Brown, Kurt Vile, Jason Mraz, James Morrison, Ferran Adrià, Pablo Alborán, Maia Vidal, Cristina Otero, The Kills, Warpaint, Antony and the Johnsons, Sidonie etc. 

Dart ́s AI artworks are in private collections of Murat Pak, Claire Silver, Artie Handz, Philbirt, Karo, ClownVamp, UnknownCollector, Roope Rainisto, Iki-Jima, Greendude, etc.